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Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Online fakebook w/ MIDI files of old-time, Anglo-Celtic fiddle tunes

What I've always needed! Call it an electronic fakebook with sound files Hetzler's Fakebook is "a web based MIDI fakebook of traditional fiddle music" with 550 American old-time, Celtic, English and Welsh fiddle tunes. explains Ed Hetzler, creator of the website:

Traditional paper Fakebooks consist of simple melody lines in standard notation sometimes with chords. Fakebooks enable musicians to access a larger repertoire of tunes. Hetzler's Fakebook goes one step farther. In addition to creating simple melody lines in standard notation when used with Notation Musician, you can hear the tune, adjust the tempo and play along.

Hetzler's Fakebook helps you improve rhythm, phrasing, and intonation. It helps you learn new tunes. It helps you practice tunes you already know. All tunes are in the public domain and arrangements are simplified for learning.

For those of us who play by ear, it has the advantage you can hear the tunes you want to learn.

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About Me

I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.